I don’t know the wars of womanhood
I am just a girl
I never questioned the gender politics of old
But I can tell you about the face of my mother
First it was shrouded in tears
As I left her womb
The first place where I left her behind

I called it puberty
The first time I said I hated her
I don’t know the words of womanhood
The literature and art of the Feminine Mystique
They will never intervene for or within me

I wish I knew
I wish I saw
But I am fully broken
A whole of hollow spaces
Fragmented foliage of Mother Nature
A mirage of an oasis
A breech in the creation of Eve
Eve meaning Mother of all living

Have I ever questioned my lack
When my mother combed through my hair
Unraveling the intricate coils called colonialism

Brushing and brainwashing the patriarchy
On to my skin and into my bones
Low and behold she didn’t know

When did we become islands
Separable colours and objectified Madonnas
An amalgamation of baby makers
Sole fertility goddesses

Are you not human do you not bleed
Can you not say my personal is political
My body is a Bell Hooks phenomenon
The perpetual ritual a primordial residual

The glass ceiling that shatters
Like the ashes of radical feminist premonitions
The world is not our oyster but a cosmic Omelas a room exists where injustice is rampant and I fear the child is you and the child is me

And when I unravel from the shapes of being a girl
Here is then my ode to womanhood
Bless the womb
The belly of a woman is like the garden of Eden
Where all things grow and become like the sands of the earth or as numerous as the stars in the sky

-v.